Average Daily Video Consumption By Device [CHART]

Thanks to media multitasking, US adults will squeeze an average of 12 hours, 5 minutes per day of media usage into their waking hours this year—nearly an hour more than the average in 2011. But the daily figure is now rising slowly and is expected to grow by just 3 minutes between 2016 and 2018. While mobile devices enable people to consume media content anywhere at any time, the numbers suggest a saturation point is near—and that increased time spent with one medium will tend to come at the expense of time spent with another.

Even in a category as robust as digital video, though, growth has slowed and is expected to slow even more. Mobile video was one of the media posting a triple-digit increase in time spent in 2012 (218.0%) as smartphones and tablets became common household appliances. This year, by contrast, the increase will just barely make double digits (10.0%) before falling below that level in 2017 (8.5%) and 2018 (7.2%).

The emergence of digital video viewing as an increasingly mainstream activity has not reduced the average level of usage by its now-broader audience. Looking just at people who are users of digital video, eMarketer’s forecast shows time spent per day rising from 1 hour, 1 minute in 2012 to 1 hour, 39 minutes in 2016, with further (but slower) growth expected to yield a figure of 1 hour, 46 minutes in 2018. Read the rest at eMarketer.